Weydert. ‘Luxembourg also had, and actually has, takeninitiatives to loosen its strict bank secrecy policy and toincrease its cooperation with foreign tax authorities. Itapplies great importance to complying with the OECDstandards. The banking secrecy in Luxembourg stillremains compatible with the rules set out by the OECD.Luxembourg thus maintains its banking secrecy policyas an instrument for protecting investor’s privacy. Suchprotection is key in a relationship of trust. However onecan say that there is definitely a certain loosening of thebanking secrecy rules laid down which can and shall notbe ignored in particular not by the private bankingsector.’The changes were bound to happen. ‘There was asense of inevitability,’ says Dirk leermakers. ‘Thechanges the Luxembourg government made were char-acteristic of current times.’ Indeed unsurprisingly, mar-ket response has been pragmatic to the new regula-tions. ‘In a way, the market has been conservative tak-ing into account that some clients have been attractedby the banking secrecy,’ comments Vivian Walry. ‘But atthe same time, other countries with banking secrecyhave been submitted to the same pressure: everybodyhas thus been obliged to apply the same transparencyrules leading to a general evolution of the market.Luxembourg is now adapting its system to fullyembrace this era of openness (the country aims atattracting new tax engineers and becoming a moreexpert and highly-skilled private banking place).’‘Luxembourg will most likely remain persistent totake a conservative approach to releasing details of itsforeign investors to authorities,’ comments JoséeWeydert. ‘However, like everyone, Luxembourg has toface constraints from the “outside”. Recent discussionson the “FATCA” are business sensitive.’The impact of these changes certainly hasn’t phasedthe legal community. ‘Private banking has been impact-ed by the discussions on the bank secrecy in that mostlikely some of the more “smaller” clients have beenfrightened off and have taken their monies out of